


climacteric

by Timballisto



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: AU where Angharad doesn't die, F/F, Furiosa has Feelings (and doesn't know how to deal with them), Gen, the only AU i'm interested in tbh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-08
Updated: 2015-06-08
Packaged: 2018-04-03 10:31:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4097644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Timballisto/pseuds/Timballisto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>climacteric</b> (/klīˈmaktərik/ /ˌklīmakˈterik/): 1) <em>noun: a critical period or event </em>2) <em>adj: extreme and far-reaching implications or results; critical</em></p><p>Or, Angharad doesn't go under the wheel of Immortan Joe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	climacteric

**Author's Note:**

> a prologue of sorts

It's hot- It's hot and she's scared. Her palms are sweating and the rig is quivering as it runs over the divots of the road and she looks back ( _Furiosa had said never look back never never never-_ ) and she sees Joe and-

Her foot slips, and Angharad sees her own death. She sees her body hit the dirt, limp as a rag doll against the earth, and feels her bones crunch beneath the car behind. Crushed, finally, both body and spirit, beneath the wheels of Immortan Joe. She sees her dreams of the Green Place swallowed by dust, her body made unholy again by the hands of her tormentor. She sees the little life inside her belly gutter and go out. Never mind that she doesn’t know if she’s capable of loving a monster-child, she had the choice- the choice dammit- and now Joe’s taken that too-

Instead, Capable screams and lunges for her. Her nails dig into the golden, sunburned flesh of Angharad’s upper arm hard enough to break the skin. But she’s too much, her body to heavy for Capable’s flimsy strength and she feels herself falling. There’s a sickening slip, and sudden drop-

“Like hell!” Angharad hears a snarl whipped away in the wind before she comes to a jerking stop. Her body twists in the wind, and she cries out in pain as her shoulder groans in protest. The hand gripping her forearm is immovable, as firmament as the earth itself and unrelenting in the face of her pain. Angharad knows before looking up that it’s Furiosa, half twisted out the window with the other wives clamped on her legs to keep her in the rig.

“I didn’t... drag you all the way out into the… fucking desert,” Furiosa gasps, her voice like gravel in the wind. “to see you go under the wheels like a War Pup.” 

Angharad could have laughed if she was able to breathe, her eyes rolling in her head and her feet scrambling for purchase. With a herculean grunt, her prosthetic clicking angrily, Furiosa drags Angharad back into the car. The gears of her metal limb catch on Angharad’s arm, drawing blood. Angharad is too busy exorcising the ghosts of a death narrowly avoided to care.

The others coo over her, questing hands touching her limbs and her body as if to make sure everything made it back inside in one piece. Furiosa is back in the front, loading another clip into her pistol as if nothing happened.

“You’re bleeding.” Dag says, touching the cut and smearing bright crimson blood on her pale fingers. It’s nothing more than a scratch drawing dewy drops of blood from her skin, but the others exclaim over it as though she’d need to borrow the Imperator’s false arm.

But Furiosa reacts viscerally, her eyes wide as she jerked around in her seat to look back at Angharad. She reaches from the passenger seat as if to touch—but pulls back at the last second as if touching Angharad’s skin would burn her flesh.

“I’m fine.” Angharad said, holding Furiosa’s gaze. If she didn’t know better, she’d almost think the woman was… afraid. 

Furiosa nods, jerkily, before turning back to the gun in her hands.

“Joe looks like he’s going to try t’come along side us again.” Toast said, sticking her head out the window to squint back at the lone vehicle trailing in the war rig’s dust. Flames streak out of the exhaust, and they can all hear the revving of the engine as the pursuit car accelerated.

“Shoot him.” The outsider, the blood bag, fool—Angharad doesn’t know what to call him after his nod of respect and her near death experience—peers at Joe through the dusty side mirror.

“Fool.” Furiosa mutters, tossing her shorn head dismissively. “The glass is too thick for bullets.” She reaches around Fool and slams her hand down on a lever just below the main control panel, grinning as savagely as any War Boy when caltrops drop behind the War rig. 

She’d timed it perfectly. Joe can’t turn sharply enough to avoid the spikes and his front tires collapse as their walls deflate abruptly, the chassis plowing into the soft sand and skidding to a stop. On the hot wind, high above the dull roar of the rig’s enginge, they can hear his scream of incoherent rage.

Something leaps in Angharad’s chest. Like hope, maybe, as Joe’s truck gets smaller and smaller behind them.

Furiosa laughs, her voice high and clear above the roar of the war rig. Even Fool manages to make a huffing noise that sounded like the animal approximation of laughter.

Angharad watches the slim column of Furiosa’s throat for a muted, golden second, before tucking her face into Toast’s hair and trying to sleep.


End file.
